You’ve probably all heard that Indian Prime Minister Modi ordered two of the most common high denomination bills (500 and 1,000 rupee) out of circulation and that they would no longer be legal tender after only a few days. India’s economy is, well, not modern. Most people do not have or use credit cards. Only […]

It happens all of the time. Obama does something feeble in terms of domestic policy or extends the unitary executive theory to assassinating Americans who should be tried first and while the comment threads fill up with anger some idiot steps in and says something like, “Yeah, but Bill Clinton was a Republican and a DLC leader and he was a Baaaaaad Dude and we don’t like him.”

And I think, where the Hell did THAT come from?

No president is perfect. I don’t expect perfection. And the DLC has been made out to be the equivalent of some Democratic Volturi, complete with glowing red eyes. Ya’ know, I just don’t buy that. The DLC has always seemed to me to be some kind of Rotary Club or other organization that you have to check off the list of memberships you need to be successful in Democratic politics.

But, Ok, maybe I’m missing something. I wrack my brains over what it is exactly that is pissing so many Democrats off about Clinton. And I come up with… nothing. Or nothing that makes any damn sense. I have to admit I didn’t like the results of the deregulation of financials with the termination of Glass-Steagall act. But as I understand it, that deregulation was going to pass with or without Clinton’s support. And I’m not fond of his former economic advisors like Rubin and Summers. But somehow, I can’t see the Big Dawg giving into the bankers in a crisis like this one.

In cases such as these, I do a gut check. I don’t look at the details. I look at results. Did the economy prosper? Yep. Did we get into any unnecessary wars? No. Were we hit by terrorism? Yes. But we also headed off a plot or two. Richard Clark says by contrast, the Clinton administration was on top of things where the Bush administration was, er, lax. Were his Supreme Court appointments reasonable? Yes, he appointed the last liberal justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to the Supreme Court according to recently retired Justice Stevens (and what does that mean regarding Elena Kagan?) Did he raise taxes? Yes, on the wealthy. That probably resulted in the surplus. Did he solve the health care debacle? No, but his wife was instrumental in getting the popular and efficient SCHIP legislation passed.

So, what is pissing off progressives? I’ve heard a lot of nasty noises about Welfare Reform. It makes no sense to me. Nobody wants to be on welfare. It needed to be reformed and getting people back to work is important. Yes, the Republicans were shooting for a retributive and mean sprited bill and they voted it in. But Clinton managed to get it softened. The other thing that gets progressives’ dander up is NAFTA. This puzzles me. What exactly is the problem with free trade between your two closest neighbors? The problem wasn’t the trade. It was the labor laws. From what I recall, the labor protections were stripped out of the bill- by Republicans. And if you were paying attention back then, something progressives apparently were not doing, you would have known that the biggest threat was from India and China, not Mexico. How many refrigerators do you buy that have “Made in Guadalajara” on them? Heck, I could see it 15 years ago when I watched a flood of Chinese scientists into the R&D industry. If China could afford to let their best and brightest go to America, how many more must they have at home? Millions, as it turns out. It’s one of the reasons I ran for the school board in my town. Our standards were abysmally low in math and science compared to China. But the truth is, if you don’t support labor, the race to the bottom is steep and cruel, regardless of how well you do in calculus.

Now, let’s revisit Obama’s “accomplishments”, shall we? Um, he doesn’t really have any. You can pass all the legislation you want but if it doesn’t help people in the end, or worse, makes their economic situations more precarious by making it easier for employers to pass on the costs of health care to their employees and making that insurance more expensive, then the total number of bills passed means squat. If you’re going to get on Clinton’s case regarding welfare reform, shouldn’t you be doubly incensed that in a Mother of all Recessions, you have his administration cutting food stamps to pay for some Race to the Top education plan that very few people want or endorse? Starve families while you starve their schools. That’s progressive? Better than Clinton? Or consider that in spite of the recommendations of some of his economic advisors, his stimulus plan failed to deliver a buzz because it was half the size it needed to be. And don’t even get me started on Obama’s unitary executive theory stuff where it is OK to keep Guantanemo open, assassinate Americans and announce that you’re ending combat operations in Iraq while you keep 50,000 troops there.

It makes no sense to keep harping on Clinton when Obama isn’t in his league. I remember the night Clinton won. The Clintons and Gores stood on the steps of the Governor’s mansion in Little Rock and we were all so happy. Ding, dong!, the nasty Republican presidents were gone. Mean spirited Reagan, hiding behind his sunny disposition and sour faced Bush who didn’t bother to hide at all, twelve years of stingy, dispiriting, soul crushing conservative nastiness, to be replaced by a young president and his working woman wife. The Clintons were who we aspired to be. Successful, hard working, dedicated public servants. And for the most part, they delivered. They gave us 8 years towards the restoration of the American Dream in spite of the screaming banshees of the Movement Conservatives.

If that success invites comparisons between Obama and Clinton and it makes the people who service Obama a tad uncomfortable, that’s not surprising. What is surprising is that so many people who should know better and know how the Republicans dogged Clinton for 8 years for no legitimate reason, would give in to the propaganda that Clinton is no better than a Republican president and a DLC mastermind. These little gems, carelessly tossed off by the likes of Big Tent Democrat and cluttering up the comment threads of progressive blogs everywhere are distractions from the fact that Obama’s performance is horrendous in terms of liberal and progressive values. He is not a friend of the working guy. Instead of giving him a pass because “Clinton was a Republican president”, why aren’t these people holding Obama to a higher standard of performance? I mean, compared to Clinton, isn’t Obama a LOT more Republican?

Unless the only point of the comments is propaganda and distraction. Yeah, that’s what I’m going for. Forget the fact that Clinton is busting his ass for the party that stupidly rejected his more qualified wife for Obama. Make sure those sheeplike progressives who are leaderless right now don’t start pining for a Clinton.

315 Responses

I don’t remember exactly where I read it, but some major blogger wrote not too long ago “That why I usually say Bill Clinton was the best Republican President we ever had”.
I was stunned. Are this guys still able to say this?

I thought I would change by know after they realized Obama was on many issues to the right of Bill Clinton, and they he didn’t go to bat for a single Liberal pet peeve.

I thought they would change their tune now that some Liberal are pointing to Rightwing policies of Obama.

Not just the Republicans. I stopped listening to “progressive radio” when Ed Schultz (who in his first year on the air loved him some big Dawg) turned on Hillary in the primary because she wouldn’t drop everything to be on his show (while O’Precious did exactly that).

Add to that the incessant hammering on Clinton on the same stations by Thom Hartman, whose knowledge is a mile wide and an inch deep.

You end up with a bunch of Air-Idiots who swallow everything they hear just because it is anti-Republican.

I think it was BTD at TalkLeft. It kinda took my breath away. The minute they get mad at Obama for perfectly legitimate reasons, they throw in this gratuitous jab at Clinton, just to remind everyone that he negotiated with the Republicans. They deliberately forget that Clinton had to negotiate because the Republicans were in charge of Congress.
So, I have to wonder about this phenomenon. They CLEARLY know that triangulate is just another word for negotiate. And they know that his terms were so much better than anything that came after.
What could *possibly* account for such selective memory and political distortion?

I don’t think they’re forgetful or they’re stupid on this matter. I think it’s on purpose. So there are two reasons then for doing this stuff on purpose:

1) is you’re a cynical asswipe who found a technique to keep the rabble talking and boost the ad revenues and feed your self importance. -or-
2) is you’re a Republican plant or helping however you’re affiliated for Republican power.

Maybe there is a third. You’re a pro monopoly corporatist and it’s in your interest to misdirect, misinform and keep the two groups fighting and distracted. Check to see if he ever worked for GS or GE or other fun powers behind the thrown.

I think he represents pharmaceutical companies on IP disputes as well or something like that. In other words, he could potentially be a corporate lackey. But not all people who work for corporations are bad, nor do corporations have to behave badly. It’s how they are regulated that makes the difference.

I disagree somewhat. There is something concerted and systematic about these comments. The purpose seems to be to dampen nostalgia for Clinton. It is very effective among the bloggy set but I don’t see the same effect working in the real world. I think most Democrats in the real world severely regret voting for Obama and wish Hillary had won the nomination. That’s what they are telling me.

You’re right; I agree that the anti-Clinton comments are disturbingly systematic. Suddenly all the Obots were spouting them in ’07 and ’08. Likely a tactic designed to disconnect Hillary from all the good governance we had under Bill.

Now they continue using it to defend O by pointing out how supposedly bad the last Dem prez was — and to try to squash chances of Hillary getting support for another run.

Yeah, the “Progressives” always use/bash Clinton as a way to gauge or prove their left-wing credentials. It’s a stock posture at Pacifica radio (i.e. KPFA, etc.) and on the campus of UC Berkeley, especially.

Well see how well Obama does in the same situation shortly. He couldn’t even get good Democratic legislation through when he had incredible Democratic majorities in both houses. It’ll be extraordinary gridlock or sell outs galore. We shall just see.

BTD is taken seriously for two reasons: he i part of the village, the ‘serious’ type, and he is a male. For the exact same reason that Josh Marshall and Kevin Drum are taken seriously.

When was the last time you read any decent, sharp, penetrating argument from either BTD or Drum? It is all regurgitated broderism, modified slightly to include the buzz words appealing to a slightly different audience.

IMO Armando/BTD has been wrong–and I mean majorly wrong–virtually every time he’s taken a stance on anything or anyone since I started reading, and very occasionally blogging on– DK in late 2003/early 2004; and reading TL for awhile in 2007/2008.

IIRC he was nominally a Clarkie, and I clearly remember his howls of outrage and betrayal when Wes signed on with Fox. I thought it was a genius move myself, and so did a friend of mine who’s forgotten more about politics than most of us will ever know in the first place (we’ll call her “Adlai’s cousin,” because she is).

I didn’t think it was possible for him to top that for sheer numnutsitude–until he decided to support the One simply–or so he said– because O was the media favorite and therefore he could win. It’s obvious now that Obama was BTD’s favorite for the same reasons he was the MSM’s, rather than simply because he was.

The “Progressives” always use/bash Clinton as a way to gauge or prove their left-wing credentials. It’s a stock posture at Pacifica radio (i.e. KPFA, etc.) and on the campus of UC Berkeley, especially.

If they admitted that Bill Clinton was a far better president than Obama will ever be, the “progressives” would have to face the fact that they were bamboozled and hoodwinked by a snake oil salesman. That they will never do.
People-especially “dudes”- would rather look like knaves than fools.
Great piece of writing, rd..

I’m not sure it is losing face that is at the bottom of this. I think it is deliberate. There is a faction in the Democratic party that absolutely does not want a Clinton in the White House. The bloggy bunch is either taking orders from that faction or is so out of touch with the rest of us that they don’t care if the party goes down with Obama.

LOL! I think you are pretty close to the truth.
Republicans represent the plutocrats and socially conservative.
Democrats represent the professional class who rely on their professional degrees to weather the economic storms.

Who represents the rest of us? You know, the working class of all educations and backgrounds who live on paychecks from some entity?
No one represents us. We have to face it. We’re on our own. Clinton was our guy. And that probably is the reason why the commenters and bloggers are smearing him. So, who is doing the smearing? Is the Republicans representing the plutocrats who have working class people right where they want us or is it the professional class people who don’t want to be associated with us?
Or both?

Why do bullies bully someone? Why are there Heather (mean, gossipy girls) bullying others? Someone starts it by picking on somebody vulnerable, and then the mean people and tag-alongs take over out of habit, because that’s what they do.

1, Clinton is from humble roots. 2, He is comfortable in his skin and doesn’t apologize for his upbringing (as in trying to act like an elite, 3- he is smart and competent, which are grating to patronizing liberal pundit class and elites. 4, the corporate bosses don’t like Bill and Hillary either, making it very rewarding for the petty pundits (who like to climb up and get promoted) to go after them.

I think you are both right, but I think there’s still something else there that I feel in my gut, but find it difficult to describe.

Many liberals, as far as I can tell, are very sincere in their desire to help the poor, the oppressed, the “little guy”. But there is a taint of noblesse oblige in how they prefer to do it. They want to help, but they also want to be seen as (and see themselves as) the magnanimous superior ones who kindly relieve the burdens of their inferiors.

Bill had a different “tone”, for lack of a better word, in how he approached helping people. He did it with genuine respect, not mawkish pity or romanticized notions about the “nobility of the poor underclasses”. Maybe because his ass had actually LIVED in a trailer park before. So he approached it more as “let the govt give you the tools and conditions to gp out and make of your lives what you want”. He didn’t really give a rat’s ass about being seen as anyone’s benefactor.

I honestly think there is a big strain of unconscious feeling on the left, whether verbalized or not, that it’s not just about helping, it’s about feeling good or even superior for helping. A whole self-centered “look at me, look at how enlightened I am for being on the side of the poor unfortunates” that they feed on. And Bill never fed that perception they had of themselves, no matter how many people he helped.

I am describing this very badly, indeed, but maybe a few will get what I’m trying to pin down.

Very similar to the thought I had above. That Clinton came from humble backgrounds, but didn’t need their patronization to get ahead. Deep down, the liberal elites have a superiority complex. Bill is not only smarter than they are, but he comes up with solutions, not high flying empty language, exposing the elites for what they are and it annoys them.

This is beautifully stated. I think the phenomenon occurs on the right side of the aisle as well. ‘Only the worthy need be helped, and of them, they’d better be darn grateful’ seems to be the general feeling.

I think everyone should be helped. 85-95% of them will use that help to get to a better place. The 15-5% who don’t, or can’t, are the benefit of living in a humane society. And I do think it’s often a benefit. Diversity is important in human society. Perhaps the next one to save us in a time of crisis will be the woman who was raised by the mother who couldn’t stand walls and raised her on the streets… who knows.

To start with: Bill and Hillary are both way smarter than all of them. I don’t mean in a ‘gone to an ivy league school’ way; I mean eally smarter. That’s got to hurt.

I think that exlains some of it, especially sexism that comes with it in the case of Hillary. Remember Chris Matthew and Dick Army (?) saying to each other, ‘no one likes a know-it-all woman’, around 2005-2006? It is my strong opinion that it’s also behind Jon Stewart’s snide attacks on Hillary. Jon Stewart is a complete d*ck (and I mean that) when the topic is Hillary.

… and when it is Bill – unless he has him on as a guest! He, Stewart, just luuuves bringing up Bill Clinton for no other reason than to hint at ‘the affair’. Not only is Stewart a d!ck, he is obsessed with d!cks.

I find all kinds of weird stuff in the “Possibly related posts” that WordPress generates. This is from “Hillary Clinton and RFK” at Leanleft:

This is very wrong, and it is wrong in a way that highlights some of the blindness of certain Clinton supporters. The Clinton campaign has unabashedly been, at least in part, about the notion that Clinton is more electable than Obama. Her arguments about winning in swing states is one example, but much of the argument has been a more subtle version of “the black guy can’t win”. When Clinton talks about how Obama cannot connect with hardworking, white Americans, when her camp says that when Bill tries to discount Obama’s victory in South Carolina by saying African Americans always win South Carolina, when the campaign is slow to distance from Ferraro after her racist remarks, when Clinton refuses to clearly state that Obama is not a Muslim on 60 minutes the implication is pretty clear: Obama cannot win because he is Black. The argument isn’t really being made very subtly anymore, and it is that argument that needs to be kept in mind when viewing the reaction to her comments about RFK’s assassination.

From Edgar Mevers to Martin Luther King, Black political leaders have been removed by the simple expediency of a bullet. It is a known and frightening part of our history, and it is no secret that racism is a live and well in this country and in this campaign. So when Clinton, after months of sometimes clumsy and offensive variations of the argument “the black guy can’t win”, implies that she needs to stay in the race because a popular candidate was killed late in the primary process, it is a legitimate window into her thinking. Clinton has stubbornly and steadfastly clung to the fiction that Obama is simply unacceptable to white working class males and thus must lose the general election. No one seriously thinks that she believes that Obama is likely to be assassinated, but I think it is reasonable to note that the comment is just an extreme version of an argument that is simply and obviously not correct. That Clinton would, even in an unguarded moment, use the death of a popular leader as a reason she must continue her campaign against an African American candidate it is a disturbing look at just how deeply Clinton and, by extension, her campaign has internalized the notion that “the black guy can’t win”.

I guess the fact that all the big states were cut out of the primary process when the RBC decided to award Michigan to Obama had nothing to do with her determination to stay in the race.
BTW, the reason why Obama won in 2008 is because he wasn’t a Republican. Or, people didn’t know that he actually was. They thought he was a Democrat. AND they were looking at decimated 401Ks and unemployment.
They didn’t have much choice. I doubt if the idea of the first black president entered the minds of most voters.

I sincerely believe that there is a financial cabal of money people that run the country. Evidence of this is in who is in the WH now and in the last presidential cycle. They control the message to the masses and therefore they control the masses. Notice how the news focuses SOLELY on whether a candidate can WIN an election rather than what they could do AFTER being elected to that office. Had the media focused on the legislative and humanitarian accomplishments of all the candidates the way the media is supposed to, Hillary would have won in a walk. The only solution to this problem is for us to beat them. Its for us to put Hillary in the WH and start the healing…..

OUR focus wasn’t the problem. Even though I wasn’t posting, I was coming here to escape the insanity that was the MSM. Those of us that support Hillary, and those people that support Palin aren’t the problem. The problem lies squarely at the Obots feet and the ‘progressives’ that fluff this administration.

For the last time: HILLARY was Bobby Kennedy in that Analogy. If she was implying that ANYONE could be assassinated (and she Wasn’t), it would have been her saying that SHE could have been assassinated.

HRC referred to Obama in one of the debates as “naive” and KNEW him to be unprepared for the office. She had years to recover from the numerous hits she and Bill took and arrived at the campaign with clear understanding of the demands of the Office, which she KNEW Obama did not. She stayed in the race because she KNEW she was qualified and it wasn’t Obama’s time. She expected responsible Super Delegates to make that decision as the Super Delegate clause was intended to protect the party after the debacle of the kids nominating George McGovern.

IMHO, many Obots who comment on blogs and newspaper articles are young people, whose parents are Christian right wingers. They were raised hating the Clintons and buy into every piece of garbage about Bill and Hillary. So they eat up the DLC stuff fed them by old Democratic lefties for whom nothing is every good enough. Some who, I take it, are paid to keep the anti-Clinton drum beating, lest the public ever has its way, and gets a chance at another Clinton presidency.

There is a problem right now. They need Bill to go and get people to vote for the Democrats. Bill is doing a great job of framing the reasons to give the Dems the next two years and then vote them out if they don’t come through. The problem is when Bill gets out there us voters start making comparisons. I saw that clip where Bill was on the Letterman show and I kept thinking, “Oh, God, why isn’t he president or Hillary.” Then I got to thinking that Obama should have put Bill on the top of the economic team but Obama is afraid of Bill. Remember, Hillary couldn’t be VP because they would have to deal with Bill. It’ s a hate, hate relationship. They need Bill but they hate the fact that they need him. Bill connects with the voters. They don’t care about the Monica thing. They just remember that we better off when he was President. On Letterman he was very thoughtful and had ideas. I thought of Obama and I thought there is no comparison. Bill is a statesman and Obama would serve our country well if he brought Bil in and utilized his ideas to get this country moving. However, Obama doesn’t want o share the limelight. Bill scares the hell out of Obama and his Obots!

As for your post it makes me wonder, once again, about when Obama’s dislike for Bill Clinton actually began? I mean if he is a Democrat, which of course is up for discussion, I would imagine that at some point he must have admired BC. And it doesn’t really – to me at least – look as if it was just election tactics. It seems more … profound. But why?

PIPS, remember when Obama was running and he said Reagan was a “transformational” president but Clinton wasn’t? That was when he didn’t have the nomination yet. Obama has never liked Clinton. He went into the Senate and basically went behind the Clinton’s backs….both of them. He used Hillary so she could help mentor him but he was quietly working on getting all of the support from the big guns to pull the rug out from underneath her. There was a real “Aha” moment when the whole Patti Solis Doyle escapade happened! There were people around Clinton that ended up being not that trustworthy!

I personally think it’s that &(#&(&# U to all on the LEFT and it goes back to putting someone in charge who doesn’t merit the position nor has put in YEARS into the PARTY. Those sorts of appointments do what the person who appointed them want and not what is best for the PARTY.

I know why. Self-preservation.
Admitting that Clinton is better than Obama = we had a choice and we blew it. That would be followed by brain explosions.
The softer stance: “It would have been the same with Hillary”

No, it wouldn’t have been the same because Hillary has a work ethic that is 24/7. She works harder than anyone in politics today. She sure as h@ll wouldn’t be taking all of these vacations while D.C. is burning.

What’s absolutely insane about Obots is that they blame liberals for being too easy on Clinton and going along with things they would have fought tooth and nail had Reagan dared to do them, like welfare reform. Maybe they’re right about that, maybe they’re wrong, idk. But I do know that the best way to fight this terrible phenomenon is NOT to annoint someone with zero liberal credentials who has no record and has never accomplished anything in politics, who runs from the right on Repub talking points and I love Reagan, pretend he’s something he never claimed to be, worship him as if he’s a god and then uncritically support him no matter what and squash critics with spurrious accusations while he outdoes Bush. They’ve done everything they blamed Clinton’s supporters for and much, much worse and are somehow amazed that it hasn’t produced a dramatically different result.

I’d like to post a photo of Jerry Brown here, don’t know how to do that………..

Here he is a prime example of a lifetime servant
for the democratic party, and his message to his party
“I did not have Taxes with this State.” I am so sick of them foaming at the mouth, and then on their knees
with saying I’m sorry, I didn’t mean what I said.

Here he is the Chief Law Maker, and he can’t speak
about the Diaz case, whereby she presented false
documents to get a job through an agency……with
the Meg Whitman household. Right there is the problem, and he says nothing about stopping fraud.
Instead he uses it as a political tool against the woman running for office.

I would agree with you that immigration is a federal issue, but the federal government is run by Obumbles. Nothing good has come from his administration addressing issues. Any issues. At all. Since they got there.

Here is what Brown said at the first debate:
“Every person arrested, their fingerprints are taken and they are sent to my office, and I now send them to the immigration office and if they are found to be here illegally they are made subject to deportation. I think if we’re going to work on illegal immigration let’s start with those who break the law. Let’s get them deported while we work for the overall comprehenisvie immigration reform.”

Well, didn’t she admit forging the documents? And I doubt very seriously that she will arrested, considering the backlash that we will have before the upcoming election.

It is up to the employer to determine if an employee meets the legal status and to make a decision about continuing to employ them.

The employer receives a letter every year if the employee has status issues. Meg knew for at least 7 years that Nicky did not.

The amount of misinformation and lies about the process are absolutely amazing. The reporters need to go talk to a small business owner or a payroll clerk so they can stop repeating a bullshit defense.

If I receive a notice letter I review 1099s/1096 and W2s/W3 for typos. Then I review the I-9s and other info with the employee. Then I meet with the employee to question / review their documents. If a problem remains I dismiss the employee.

I am amazed at the number of people who think/ thought employers should be prosecuted if they employ non legal workers until this case. Now those same people think Meg should get a pass .

And this from the above referenced article:

“In fact, had she gone ahead and fired Nicandra Diaz Santillan based on such a letter, she would have exposed herself to potential anti-discrimination violations, lawyers said.”

TOTAL ABSOLUTE BULLSHIT !

The problem – some people actually believe this. Saying it does not make it so.

It depends. A no-match letter is sent by Social Security, not the IRS. It is not an indication or fraud, simply that the SSA cannot verify the number with a name. In fact, the first letter goes to the employee, followed by a letter to the employer.

I can see where an employer of one or a few people may not understand the purpose of the letter. Some investigation should be done. A no-match could be as simple as a type or a mismatch of a maiden name. I do think the Whitmans (or whatever her husband’s name is) have the resources to ask a lawyer about this instead of leaving it to their housekeeper.

The lawyer who said that was not Meg Whitman’s attorney but an immigration specialist who was picked by the SF paper. You are right, saying it doesn’t make it so, but when a professional says it maybe he deserves a listen.

I think it was the the 9th Circuit of SF, that addressed the so no match rule. That was a case of 33 jainitors who were fired in LA because of no match-us, were required to be rehired with back pay. I read it was 48 employees who didn’t match up, and that
company gave them 3 days to clear up the problem, and 15 did, and the other 33 were fired.

“A Social Security number discrepancy does not automatically mean that an employee is undocumented, the court said. The govenment can try
to prove that an employer must have known about the employee’s status, but it needs more evidence than a mismatch in the Social Security datatbase, which was not designed for immigration enforcement, the court said.”

Rather than continue with this off topic, I’ll just say the laws are not clear, and change everydam minute of the day.

The sources for legal information in the SF Chronicle story were Gening Liao, a labor and employment attorney at the National Immigration Law Center in Los Angeles, which defends immigrants and Crystal Williams, executive director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association in Washington.

Neither are right wing stooges. Of course, they are also not anyone else’s stooges so that may be a problem for Allred.

I’ve heard this buzz repeatedly about how Bill Clinton was nothing but a Republican in disguise, how he gave away the store and OMG then there’s Monica Lewinsky.

Bill Clinton was the best President I ever had the pleasure to vote for. Twice. The 90’s were the most profitable and peaceful period of my lifetime. The years weren’t perfect and neither was the man. But they were the best of my living memory.

We missed a rare opportunity to elect Hillary Clinton to lead this country out of the wasteland. She, too, is not perfect nor is she a saint. But both the Clintons have been and continue to be dedicated public servants. And that’s what drives their enemies wild.

The Clintons are also fighters; they don’t give up. We saw Hillary go the last round despite the Obamatrons and press hounding her to withdraw from the race. She didn’t and I loved her for that, in the same way I loved Bill Clinton for not backing off or stepping down when the Republican slime machine hit him with everything they had. They could not bring the junkyard dog down.

The Clintons are on our side, ordinary people. And that’s why their enemies despise them.

I’m not sure it is losing face that is at the bottom of this. I think it is deliberate. There is a faction in the Democratic party that absolutely does not want a Clinton in the White House.
*********
That is probably the major reason that Obama was chosen to be the nominee. He is just the stooge. There is no way in hell that the political deals that were cut with “big Money” were arranged by Obama or his Chicago handlers. 1) there is no way %100s of millions of corporate $$ would be given to an unknown and 2) working the deals with Wall street, the banksters, health care industry, etc took a lot longer than just the run up to the election.

The DNC, Pelosi, Reid, Dean, et al saw a huge opportunity for money and majorities forever and they sold to soul of the Dem Party to do it. The superficially charming candidate with the manufactured life story was chosen to be the likely nominee before he ran for the Senate. Unfortunately, the aggressive pro-corporate legislative agenda combined with the fact that Obama is turning out to be an unappealing, incompetent, sociopath, is going to bite these political “wizards” in the ass.

Nah, Edwards didn’t get enough funding. Edwards actually had more liberal stances in the ’08 campaign compared with his ’04 run. Tho I suspect his improved stances were due to Elizabeth’s influence.{{{blessings on EE}}}

Seems to me as more “details” come out that the fix was in for a long time. Another example is Pete Rouse. Here is a guy who was Chief of Staff to Dick Durbin and then Daschle when he was Senate majority leader. He then take the chief of staff job from a unknown political hack, just beginning his first US Senate term. Obama did pick Rouse; Rouse was selected for Obama. Another “minder” just like Rahm, Summers, Timmy, etc. etc. ad nauseum.

I was remembering a June 2010 post by John Cole at Buffoon Juice (who when from CDS GOPER to CDS Democrat in 2007) and when I found it there was more there than I thought:

And when you point that out, you are hippie-punching or just an O-bot and not a critical thinker. And he managed to do all this without ANY help from the Republicans and minimal help from the Blue Dogs, all while dealing with a childish media (Is he smoking? Does he hate the womyn folks because he won’t shoot hoops with them? Is he angry enough?) and a left-flank that thinks teaming up with Grover Norquist and echoing Republican talking points is moving the fucking Overton Window.

You point out the fact that this is the most successful Democratic Presidency in my lifetime and all you hear is but, but but… He didn’t get single payer!

Didn’t we hear recently that Susie Madrak invented the term “hippie-punching?”

I think the Obots hate the Clintons because the corporate media hates the Clintons. They liked Obama because the corporate media told them to like Obama. It doesn’t go much deeper than that with these people.

When people say Bill Clinton is the best Republican President we’ve had in 50 years, I agree, and add that Obama is most certainly the worst.

The DLC is far, far from a “Rotary Club” for Democratic politicians. It was created explicitly to move the party to the right, to marginalize liberals and labor, and to present a more “business friendly” face, the latter of which included a heavy emphasis on deregulation–including the catastrophic repeal of Glass-Steagal, which Bill Clinton could have vetoed had he been so inclined–and “free trade,” the latter of which has been devastating to workers but very damn good to corporations.

Would Hillary Clinton have been a better president than Obama? Maybe; she would have been hard pressed to do worse. But her supporters would do well to remember that she’s a classic Scoop Jackson hawk, that during her time in the Senate she was second only to the GOP’s Rick Santorum at collecting money from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and that her economic advisors would have been pretty much the same crowd as Obama’s.

I am no Obama fan. The day after the election I predicted that he would be the most disappointing president since World War II. In fact, I pretty much called his agenda right down the line.

But this Clinton nostalgia simply ignores reality. Both Clintons supported the invasion of Iraq. Both are free traders. Both would have escalated in Afghanistan. Both would have relied upon the same people who created the economic meltdown to fix it; they’re both classic neoliberals, and one of Hillary’s first big-money supporters was Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, whose previous fundraising experience was as a Bush Ranger–one of those guys who raised at least $200,000 for Bush’s campaign.

Bash Obama? Fine; nobody’s better at it than I am. But please, get real on the Clintons.

I think the Obama administration has by and large gotten what it wanted, using GOP obstruction as an excuse to water down their already watery proposals. But there’s no particular reason to think that the Clinton agenda would have been much better. She’s a friend to big money, she’s a friend to the health insurance industry and she’s a friend to the military.

As for Bill Clinton, I’m sure he would have loved having the kind of numbers that Obama is about to wave good-bye to. But he still would have been a fan of deregulation and a staunch “free trade” advocate. And he still would have been blowing up Iraq from time to time for no particularly good reason.

He’s a superb politician, the kind who comes along maybe once in a generation if that. But after he got his ass kicked in Arkansas, he turned into a pretty conservative one, and Gore was more conservative than Clinton was. Is there anything in particular you have in mind so far as policy goes?

What planet are you on? We have no idea what Obama would have voted on the IWR because he wasn’t in The Senate at the time facing enormous pressure from hais constituents. I think he would have crumpled pretty easily and not had any rationalization for his decision. Look how easily he was going to cave on John Roberts.
You have obviously convinced yourself on Clinton, regardless of all evidence to the contrary. It is useless to even argue with you.

I’m sure that Obama would have voted for the war resolution, which he is happily using right now to justify his assassination policy.

Furthermore, Obama loved welfare reform. It’s the one thing from Bill Clinton’s administration that Obama praises in his book Audacity of Hope. It’s in the same chapter where he argues for privatization of social programs. That book was a big part of what turned me off Obama very early on.

AND, Obama was a DLC project and only withdrew his name from membership after the Black Agenda Report exposed him for it.

My understanding of the DLC is that they recommend candidates to corporate donors and can get a lot of financial backing for their favored candidates. Their endorsement is considered a positive for business-type donors.

Obama had a lot of money very early, and I assume that was because he was the top DLC candidate with his photo on the fp of their website.

The DLC was formed after Walter Mondale became the 3rd Democrat to take an ass-whipping in 12 years. Regardless of what you think of the organization it is ridiculous for Obots to hate Bill Clinton for being a member when Obama is a DLCrat in practice..

The repeal of Glass-Steagall was passed in the Senate 90–8 (one not voting) and in the House: 362–57 (15 not voting).

Point taken on Glass-Steagal: my bad. But the fact remains that he and his economic team were stumping for it.

As for Obama, let me reiterate: I think he’s a freaking disaster. I thought he would be one before the election, and I said so early and often. His domestic policies bear a startling resemblance to those of Richard Nixon’s–something I also pointed out frequently before the election–but so do many of the ones advocated by Hillary Clinton during her campaign. She’s a militarist and a corporate dream, which is why so many corporate leaders supported her early on.

Go ahead and beat on Obama all you want. He deserves it, and more. Just quit idealizing the Clintons.

Under the Big Dawg we had the longest sustained economic expansion in our history, with most of that prosperity going to the lower and middle class. The gap between rich and poor shrunk, and we had a surplus.

You might recall that while every other Dem primary candidate was promising the moon and the stars, Hillary showed some restraint. Perhaps as a means of avoiding the inevitable spanking she’d have gotten for making promises she couldn’t keep. She’d already been screwed over for proposing serious healthcare reform. I think her proposal was fairly clearly the first of a series of baby-steps. Just like SCHIP was. The obvious difference between the Clintons and Obama, is that the Clintons are Idealists at heart and pragmatists in practice. Obama is an opportunist at heart, and an opportunist in practice. If what you’re looking for is an unelectable true-believer who makes no concessions to reality, might I recommend Kucinich?

I think you’re caricaturing our position, especially on the issue RD touched on here on the main post.

We don’t idealize the Clintons. Personally, I think Hillary would have been better on health care, would have fought for a larger stimulus, and overall would have been to the left of Obama on economic policies.

The main point is that the people who call Clitnon a “Republican” because of his policies should
– either be calling Obama a “Rightwinger”
– or STFU!

She showed no spine when it came to the AUMF. I listened to every minute of debate broadcasted by NPR. A nobody like me knew the whole thing was bullshit. Why didn’t she?

I remember the most spine was shown by the old guy from West Virginia with one foot in the grave.

That vote was THE vote. That was single most important vote of her senatorial career. That vote could have made her unbeatable in the presidential election, something I would like to have seen. I wanted her to be the one to say “I represent the Democratic wing of the Democratic party.”

The second and third most important votes were the Patriot Act and its reauthorization. Fail on both counts. I remember her explanations. I reject them as weasely on both occasions.

Backbone in voting is not shown when you take the easy vote. It’s shown when you put your seat at risk for principle.
The principle that Congress ought to declare war is paramount. The protections in the Bill of Rights are paramount.

She might have made a better president than Obama. But would she really have give up all that presidential power Bush II managed to accrue to the office?
We’ll never know unless she runs again and wins.

I didn’t and don’t still agree with them, but the biggest difference again is that the left HOLDS her accountable for her positions. The left basked in the glow of O like he was an anti-war messiah even though his actual positions once he reached the Senate were hardly distinguishable as “anti-war” at all.

THAT is the difference.

The left (including the anti-war left) under Hillary would not be the cold fish it is under Obama.

She already was unbeatable in the Presidential election. If you’ll remember, she was hobbled in the nomination process, and it wasn’t because Donna and Howie are such peaceniks. We’ll never know, but I don’t think voting against AUMF would have helped her there. Besides being caricatured as a weak female who’s too sensitive to handle national defense, what votes would she have picked up there? The people who were fine with Kerry, fine with Edwards? Probably not. The people who were so passionately anti-war they now don’t give a damn whatsoever? Probably not. Who, then?

For the record, I don’t agree with her AUMF vote either. I just don’t believe that voting against would have helped her at all, she could have been the ONLY vote against it and gotten no credit from anti-war progs (oh so many of whom were not actually anti-war anyway, but that’s another story). Wonk is as always exactly right. The left would always hold her accountable.

why is it that the first viable female candidate had to be free from the sin that Kerry, Edwards, and Obama himself (remember his saying his Iraq position is the same as Bush’s in ’04) were not free of?

Shall I tell my little story of being told by Kerry’s staff that Ms. Hill’s vote on AUMF disqualified her from being President? You know, I think Medea might have actually drunk human blood. For pleasure. So you always have to keep in mind that those who bear the mark of Original Sin don’t make forgivable mistakes so much as they’re motivated by pure primordial evil. Silly.

Lol!! Please do share your Kerry staff story here, maybe that would provide some insight for our friends who have been showing up here to remind us that Hillary ain’t no goddess of perfection. (We know. It’s why we prefer her.)

I actually meant to pose that question about political “sin” more to fachero, but thanks Seriously.🙂

Out of curiousity, WB, is any of this historical opposition to Obama “on the record” anywhere? I’m also curious if you have any evidence or citations (from credible sources) for your claims that she was advocating these bizarrely militaristic and pro-corporate policies during the campaign? Like say an accurate quote? Some of us watched that particular campaign fairly closely, so walking in with a scholarly stick up your ass isn’t going to pass muster unless you actually Know shit.

Okay, I take that part back. You seem credible. I still wouldn’t characterize Hillary’s stances as militaristic and pro-corporate on the whole, but I’m no longer working off the assumption that you’re entirely full of shit.

As for bizarrely militaristic, I’m relying on history here, as per her support of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Her positions weren’t bizarre by party standards; many of her colleagues fell in line as well. Here’s a fairly good summary of her sentiments:http://www.fpif.org/articles/hillary_clinton_on_military_policy

Your credibility as being a lefty is no longer in doubt. Your capacity for strategic thinking is, but that’s a whole other story.

As to your “evidence” of Hillary’s militarism, it is UTTERLY ridiculous. First of all, it takes no context into consideration. Hillary is a woman, and thus has to play a very particular game in terms of winning the respect of voters. To disregard that is essentially to cripple all women in politics. Hillary was also a senator in New York at the time of the 9/11 attacks. So there’s that whole Representative Democracy thing to take into account.

Secondly, the article is based on a supremely shallow interpretation of a couple of debate moments. If you actually WATCHED the debates, you’d know that she ridiculed Obama for saying that he would meet with Chavez, Castro, et al. WITHOUT PRECONDITIONS. Which is STUPID. It gives away a Massive bargaining chip. Hillary’s criticism of Obama’s position on that (as stated in the debate) was dead-on.

Thirdly, the article is an unscholarly piece of Shit. It cites effectively zero sources, and the glib and fleeting mentions that other publications Do get are nearly all biased sources. This article is a screed, not investigative journalism.

Finally, I may be stepping on delicate prog toes here, but being in favor of military intervention is not in and of itself a bad thing. Military intervention prevents genocide. Military intervention protects human rights. Military intervention takes down corrupt and oppressive regimes. Blind pacifism is as short-sighted as blind militarism. Decisions must be made and they must be made on the basis of the information one has at the time. My pacifism ends precisely where my cultural relativism does: At the widespread abuse of human rights.

Hillary Clinton is a hawk, as far as foreign policy is concerned. At least, she was one in the senate. But you know what: she didn’t cover it up. Her record was out in the open and for all to see.

But as to domestic policy and sheer competence, she is far, far superior to Obama. She is tough and she can stand to all kinds of people and interests, as she did during the campaign.

By the fact that the far left and media both had a dislike for her, could have worked very well for the American people. Because when Clintons are in a tough spot, they take their case directly to the people. That would be really good for populist policies, although the media (and cheeto-ville) hate would have been insane. Plus, there would have been far less bu**sh*t, since the media never lets a Clinton get away with even a small discrepancy.

No politician is perfect, but Clintons have some of the best records in terms of delivering actual progressive policies, and fighting for them.

Yes, Obama is a complete and utter disaster. When the Obots come here and say that Hillary wouldn’t have been any different, they don’t realize that based on sheer competence and work ethic (excluding the fact that she is , Hillary would have managed things – at least with her domestic agenda – completely different from Obama. She would’ve never sold out women’s rights. She would’ve fought harder against the Republicans for a public option. She would’ve been more knowledgeable in fixing the economy and not giving into completely to corporate interests. Most Americans today would trust Hillary and Bill’s economic expertise to clean up the Bush mess over Obama’s community organizing experience and his wife’s gardening and weight loss agenda.

I am always in the weird position of both defending the economic model and criticizing it. I think that there can’t be a knee jerk reaction against all businesses and all businesses can’t be treated similarly I’m pro business and I like fair and free trade which makes me look–on the surface–like the type that lean Republican. I do lean towards the Clinton/DLC paradigm on this. But let’s be very clear, I’m pro setting up ground rules that don’t play into big powerful blocs. Big Labor offsets Big Corporations. That model works fine there, but that paradigm can’t be transferred to smaller businesses or even medium sized business. NAFT wouldl’ve been a better situation had Mexico developed instead of stuck to it’s colonial economy model where there are mega rich and peasants. You can’t look at a free trade area with Canada in the same way you look at a free trade area with Mexico. Totally different playing field. We need controls on the big guys and less controls on the small to medium players. Problem is the big donor money comes from the big guys and what they lobby for just solidifies their market control.

We need to treat business differently depending on the tier they fall into … same with countries and trade agreements.

China cheats all the time. They are a big problem. Mexico is a failed state. We can’t treat these countries the same as we treat France or Mongolia.

Pish tosh. No matter what kind of cabal you make the DLC out to be, the record speaks for itself: we all prospered under Clinton. The rich payed more in taxes because of him. THAT’S something a president trying to pull the country rightward was unlikely to do.
BTW, I see nothing wrong with the party being willing to work with business. But there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. The right way is to examine regulation and adjust it according to changes in technology or obsolescence. The wrong way is to just give corporations anything they want because they won’t vote for you otherwise.
As for Hillary being the better president, I have absolutely no doubts that she would have been better. She had the best mentor in the world and understood the concerns of the working class.
You picked Obama, forced him down our throats and we blame YOU personally for everything that followed.

I didn’t pick Obama. I thought he would turn out to be pretty much a disaster, and he has more than lived down to my expectations. But you’re dreaming about Hillary’s commitment to the working class–see NAFTA, see her support from the Morgan Stanley CEO (not to mention Reagan/Bush official Bruce Bartlett), and if you’re wanting to blame Obama for the Bush tax cuts, that seems no more rational than the Clinton hatred coming from some Obama fans.

NAFTA wouldn’t have been such a big problem if Mexico would’ve held up their end of the bargain and we’d have made them do it. Mexico has basically become a failed state and is in worse shape than it was 30 years ago, despite its vast wealth. NAFTA’s problems stem from Mexico’s level of corruption. If Mexico would’ve modernized and its ruling class would quit acting like French aristocracy, NAFTA would be a better deal. Also, we’ve never really held Mexico’s feet to the fire for it’s incredible internal problems. Just like we don’t hold China’s feet to the fire for its perpetual cheating with its exchange rates.

0h, and again, remember that the big megacorporations benefit from Mexico’s peasant class while it hurts the smaller businesses. Againk we have a two tiered economy and we’ve had lemon capitalism for about 10 years now. They government is acting in the interests of the big guys and its not only hurting labor, but its hurting smaller to medium-sized businesses too.

So how exactly Did Hillary get all that highly credible Union support during ’08? I mean, if she’s been spending her time stepping on the working class in her bitch-lady cha-cha heels, why was Delores Huerta all over her candidacy? Why did she secure so many of the blue-collar voters, while Obama was hopping from Starbucks to Starbucks courting the urban intelligentsia (which, btw, is a nicer way of saying the urban, ivory tower narcissists)?

BTW, in my opinion, and I am not speaking for my company or the industry I work for, Hillary would have been better for the pharmaceutical industry in e long run. I think they could have worked with her more productively. Instead, they got the guy they wanted but their success may be brief. The same problems are there and the Obama administration hasn’t got a clue how to deal with them.

I have noticed the primary difference between Obots and Clinton supporters is that all the points made are valid and are perfectly legitimate critisisms of the Clinton presidency. I certainly agree with most (not so much the Iraq thing as I don’t believe they had all the facts. If they did them I ammend my statement by removing the ‘most’) of the points made. Tell an Obot that health care refore is now and will in the future be a bad thing and watch them meltdown in front of you.
Plus, what they are saying about President Clinton is just wrong. How do you knock the most effective dem president as a dem? Why would you when describing the era in which he achieved so much disdain to even mention his name (ala McCaskill)? Why would you imply to anyone listening that either of the Clintons’ are racist?

They are humans, and prone to make decisions that I disagree with (as you have demonstrated in your post) But I would never disparage his record….

An even better question us why the hell would you run him down when he’s working overtime to get your party re-elected and it increasingly looks like he’s the only guy who can pull it off?
Majorly effed up and ungrateful, not to mention stupid beyond belief.

Good point. As the senator from NY and wife of a former president, she was in a tough spot. I think the iWR was the only vote where I think she compromised her principles or at least tried to rationalize compromising by substituting her support for the president’s prerogative. Would she have won in 2008 if she had voted no? I don’t know. I think the party would have sidelined her anyway. In the end, it had nothing to do with the wars

Hillary would have used public financing for her presidential campaign, and would not have been a corporate stool pigeon. Obama raised his hand timidly when the question was asked who would take public financing during a “debate.” He reneged per usual. McCain was the first major Presidential candidate to do so.

Also, the Clintons have always had the little people at heart. Look at their record in Arkansas. Best Dem president in my lifetime and all of the Republican ones have been awful.

Are you excited about even one more year of Axelrod’s revival of his Hopte+Change(TM) campaign creation?

Keep in mind that most progs were either very young, politically apathetic, or full-on Republicans back in the Clinton years. In any case, they’re parsing Clinton’s presidency without an accurate understanding of the details or the context. It’s all based on what they heard other people saying about it.

DADT was a vitally important step in the right direction. Should it go away now? Of course. But we wouldn’t be in any position to push for openly queer folk serving now without having DADT as an intermediary step. But if you ask a prog, it was Clinton caving to Republican interests. Bullshit. That’s just one example. Sure some of them are just propagandizing, knowing what they’re saying is false. But a lot of them are just painfully ignorant.

It’s the fucking hypocrisy that still gets me. The progs (Obot supporters or no) all bought totally contradictory memes simultaneously. Obama and Hillary aren’t particularly different. Except that Obama is a progressive messiah and Hillary is an evil Republican. Obama is the peace candidate, and Hillary is the Hawk! Obama co-sponsored the Iran Counter-proliferation Act of 2007, but Hillary is evil for signing on for the Kyl-Lieberman Iran Amendment!

I think all of this insane double-think is what gave rise to the stupid “What Obama MEANS” process that eventually happened. He became the Oracle at Delphi. Because you can interpret what he’s saying to mean whatever you want if you’re one of the priests, regardless of the fact that it’s meaningless babble.

And on this subject, why do they need so many new studies? Just use the existing facts. England, Canada and Australia allow gays to serve in the military and I don’t recall our cowboy President disqualifying their participation from the “coalition of the willing.” In fact, they served well and there were no special incidents.

I think the Obots in 2008 piled up on Clinton because if they didn’t Hillary would have been presiden. Now the Oprecious is in the presidency and has turned out to be Jr. jr, the only way to elevate their O is to push down Bill.

I’m not any sort of troll; I just think it’s ridiculous to demonize Obama and sanctify the Clintons, particularly while Hillary Clinton is crafting the Obama foreign policy. And I actually don’t think “lefty purity troll” is significantly more worthy of condemnation than “righty convenience troll.” But one’s mileage may vary.

If Obama hadn’t blocked Single Payer, The Public Option and Killed the Medicare Buy In, I would be out there knocking on doors…instead I have to work harder to pay for the lowest co-pay insurance that now costs what my good insurance cost, before his base (Wall Street and the Insurance Companies) were allowed to empty out our pockets.

So, if you want me to sing his praises, he has to KEEP his ‘ME TOO PROMISES’…which he didn’t.

The willingness to accommodate Democrats as they drift ever farther to the right ensures that they will continue to drift ever farther to the right. If that’s what you want, fine. It’s not what I want and I won’t facilitate it.

Regarding Bill Clinton in 1992: I think Tom Harkin was probably the best of the lot. Jerry Brown was better than Clinton on a lot of issues, but he probably would have been impeached the day after he took office had he won, rather than a few years down the road. Neither of them had anything like Clinton’s charisma. I voted for Clinton in the general, and I’m still in awe of his political skills; I’m just not a fan of many of the policies in service of which he exercised them.

Is there some point to this macho posturing? “Eat my lunch?” High school much, bubba? You asked me who I thought would have done better, and I told you. Clearly your only interest is in scoring imaginary points off me. Welcome to it.

What was trollish about it? I put it there because the knee-jerk response to anyone criticizing the Clintons seems to be to assume that the criticism is coming from an Obama supporter, which I’m not and never have been, and I wanted to dispense with that assumption up front..

I kind’ve have a weirdish question. There’s a travel ‘alert’ out and even though it’s for Europe, it’s vaguely reminiscent of the orange terror alerts that used to go out speciously close to elections. None of the European countries involved have put out alerts quite this high(e.g, UK and DR). Does any one think this is similar to those odd orange alerts we’d suddenly get back in the Bush years so close to elections?

IIRC, we had something like 2% unemployment during Clinton’s last term. Which proves two things: 1.) it IS possible to get people off the welfare rolls and into the workforce if you give them the means to do it and 2.) taxing the rich does not mean there will be fewer jobs created.
So, both lefty and righty puritans were proven wrong by Clinton. No wonder they want to pile on him.

I think the comparisons are odious but if you insist. Clinton inherited a recession and turned it into a boom. Clinton had much worse numbers in congress in terms of Republicans. That being said, he did make more moderate change than I personally would’ve liked. But look at “Hillarycare”. Clinton usually didn’t put the compromise position out first. Obama’s legislative agenda has usually put out the compromised position and then he compromises further. That is, I believe the main difference. Plus, Clinton came in with less anger at the Bush/Reagan years than Obama came in after Dubya. Folks were demanding change when Obama came in, Clinton had to sneak it in.

The way you, Riverdaughter and the others feel about Obama is similar to how I felt about Bill Clinton throughout the nineties, with the exception that I don’t believe Clinton was a Republican.

Maybe my memories of Clinton are informed by having been a regular KPFK listener in Los Angeles throughout his presidency. The analogy KPFK audience is to Clinton as Conflucians are to Obama is imperfect, but I think apt.
Moreover, I take your uncertainty as to welfare reform’s parentage as demonstration that all of our memories of Clinton’s presidency are hazy and we are as likely to shock ourselves as we are to be confirmed in our remembrance if we were carefully to examine the journalistic record.

I remember thinking of NAFTA as an enormous betrayal of the union voters who helped put Clinton in office. It was as big a betrayal of the Democratic base as Obama’s milquetoast, weasely “change”. (And by “change” I mean “almost exactly the fucking same as Bush.”)

I don’t know if I have a point here.
Look, I’m as pissed as you. I have buddies who got “changed” right into Obama’s Afghan escalation. I escaped that change only by the grace of the bureaucracy that sent me to Korea instead.

As brilliant as the analysis here is, and though I value it, I do sometimes find myself wondering if everyone’s fond remembrance of Bill Clinton is not as much reaction to Obama’s failures as based objectively on Clinton’s performance in office.

So are you saying NAFTA WASN’T a betrayal of the Democratic base? Support for NAFTA is consistent with the concern shown here for working Americans?

Sure, in the narrowest sense of the word he betrayed nothing. But now we’re splitting hairs.

I sure felt betrayed, though. I remember the year on food stamps (which as a six year old I thought were coupons) when dad’s union went on strike.
I remember the union’s defeat. And I remember a decade and a half later Clinton trying to be a New Democrat, doing little for the base. I remember Democrats running from unions (except during the summer before an election) and not wanting to be liberal or progressive or whatever.
Yes, he was better than Bush I would have been, or Dole.
But that’s exactly the same lame excuse given for Obama, isn’t it? He’s marginally better than Bush II. Damning with faint praise.

I’m not an Obot and I have no interest in piling on the Clintons. I just don’t think Clinton hagiography is the answer.
Anyone who makes it to that office will compromise themselves sooner or later. Let’s not forget that.
Maybe that’s my point.

NAFTA was and is a necessary thing, the big sucking sound happened when Carly (HP) started sending jobs oversees. Canada and Mexico under NAFTA provide necessary regional security and other support. With the H1N1 crisis, Mexico sent the sample to Canada who has equal bio technology to the US via Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).

Also, during 911 Mexico said they would provide all the necessary oil to keep the US going (they already provide 40% and are not members of OPEC) the crisis as neighbors and due to Big Dawgs NAFTA agreement. Why is that important?

Economics
OPEC is a swing producer[26] and its decisions have had considerable influence on international oil prices. For example, in the 1973 energy crisis OPEC refused to ship oil to western countries that had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War or 6 Day War, which Israel had fought against Egypt and Syria. This refusal caused a fourfold increase in the price of oil, which lasted five months, starting on October 17, 1973, and ending on March 18, 1974. OPEC nations then agreed, on January 7, 1975, to raise crude oil prices by 10%.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC

I remember the big lines, and the fires caused by storing gasoline in unapproved containers when in the 1973 Oil crisis.

So, until we develop some new forms of energy and become less dependent on oil, you should look at the BIG picture and why NAFTA was necessary. You also need to look at this:

In the U.S., Bush, who had worked to “fast track” the signing prior to the end of his term, ran out of time and had to pass the required ratification and signing into law to incoming president Bill Clinton. Prior to sending it to the United States Senate, Clinton introduced clauses to protect American workers and allay the concerns of many House members. It also required U.S. partners to adhere to environmental practices and regulations similar to its own. The ability to enforce these clauses, especially with Mexico, and with much consideration and emotional discussion the House of Representatives approved NAFTA on November 17, 1993, by a vote of 234 to 200. The agreement’s supporters included 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats. NAFTA passed the Senate 61-38. Clinton signed it into law on December 8, 1993; it went into effect on January 1, 1994.[2][3]

Gosh, when you look at things, Big Dawg actually made some sound decisions and stopped the train and made sure his concerns were addressed. Nice when the President reads what he is going to sign and can discuss verse and line too.

NAFTA was and is a necessary thing, the big sucking sound happened when Carly (HP) started sending jobs oversees. Canada and Mexico under NAFTA provide necessary regional security and other support. With the H1N1 crisis, Mexico sent the sample to Canada who has equal bio technology to the US via Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC).

Also, during 911 Mexico said they would provide all the necessary oil to keep the US going (they already provide 40% and are not members of OPEC) the crisis as neighbors and due to Big Dawg’s NAFTA agreement. Why is that important?

Economics
OPEC is a swing producer[26] and its decisions have had considerable influence on international oil prices. For example, in the 1973 energy crisis OPEC refused to ship oil to western countries that had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War or 6 Day War, which Israel had fought against Egypt and Syria. This refusal caused a fourfold increase in the price of oil, which lasted five months, starting on October 17, 1973, and ending on March 18, 1974. OPEC nations then agreed, on January 7, 1975, to raise crude oil prices by 10%.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC

I remember the big lines, and the fires caused by storing gasoline in unapproved containers when in the 1973 Oil crisis.

So, until we develop some new forms of energy and become less dependent on oil, you should look at the BIG picture and why NAFTA was necessary. You also need to look at this:

In the U.S., Bush, who had worked to “fast track” the signing prior to the end of his term, ran out of time and had to pass the required ratification and signing into law to incoming president Bill Clinton. Prior to sending it to the United States Senate, Clinton introduced clauses to protect American workers and allay the concerns of many House members. It also required U.S. partners to adhere to environmental practices and regulations similar to its own. The ability to enforce these clauses, especially with Mexico, and with much consideration and emotional discussion the House of Representatives approved NAFTA on November 17, 1993, by a vote of 234 to 200. The agreement’s supporters included 132 Republicans and 102 Democrats. NAFTA passed the Senate 61-38. Clinton signed it into law on December 8, 1993; it went into effect on January 1, 1994.[2][3]

Gosh, when you look at things, Big Dawg actually made some sound decisions and stopped the train and made sure his concerns were addressed. Nice when the President reads what he is going to sign and can discuss verse and line too.

Gosh, no.
I remember the same long lines. Gas on Tuesdays if your license plate ended in an even number, Thursdays if an odd number, or something like that.

OK, so we’ve both established our true working class roots. Good for us.

So we’re talking energy now. I remember Carters efforts in this area, or that he made an effort at all.
So, did the Big Dawg go back to Carter’s sensible ideas? Or produce any of his own? Nope. Did he stack his treasury department with fat cats? Yes. The same ones, in fact, who are now pushing Obama around.
So, a bit of “it’s only OK when the Big Dawg does it”, hey?
Your Big Dawg looks great in comparison to twelve years of Reagan and Bush. How could he not? All he had to do was not support death squads in Central America and appoint a labor secretary who didn’t hate unions and he’d improve foreign and domestic policy.
But these are negative accomplishments. They’re more about not doing something than taking affirmative steps to do something good.

Corporate profits have risen steadily since at least the seventies while wages have lagged behind.
They lagged less under Clinton, agreed. Wealth has been concentrated into fewer hands, though the pace of that slackened under Clinton.
This is what makes him so great? If we accept the premise that presidents can affect such things, then this is your Big Dawg’s superiority? That he lagged less than the two guys before him?

We wouldn’t call FDR a great president if the best we could say about him is he was less shitty than Hoover.
FDR once said he welcomed the hate of the “malefactors of great wealth.” Clinton never dared even go near such a statement. Nor will Obama ever welcome such hate.

Wealth has been concentrated into fewer hands, though the pace of that slackened under Clinton
… among many other delusions…
CDS much? You’re not even close to the facts. Take off the CDS goggles. Stop with the irrational hate. Jeebus you people are fucking nuts.

1. What is CDS and what are CDS goggles?
2. I don’t take marching orders from anyone on politics. The only orders I take are the ones I’m bound to by law by my oath of enlistment.
3. Who’s the hater here? I’m trying to think my way through the politics of the day, out loud as it were, by coming to this blog. I don’t hate Clinton. I just don’t think he was the second coming of Mother Jones.
4. I guess wealth hasn’t been concentrated into fewer hands? Is that what you’re telling me?
5. Union membership didn’t decline during Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II? Is that what you’re telling me?
6. Or are you jumping to conclusions about me because saying Obama has been a terrible president is not enough, I must also praise Clinton?
7. Examining Clinton’s presidency here sometimes feels like critiquing Israeli policy. One must repeat ad fucking nauseum yes suicide bombers are bad, yes they are criminals, no I don’t think Hamas has a right to kill innocent bystanders, that by the time I’m finished declaring how bad a president Obama is, there’s no point to make.

There is Obama Derangement Syndrome out there, and about half of the people who have it are Obama’s hagiographers.

Fachero, I remember you and don’t think you have CDS or hate the Clintons. But, imho neither Clinton is a captive to Wall Street, though I do think a President Hillary would have been better than Bill on this issue. Captivity to Wall Street is not the same thing as being able to work with business. The Clintons can take money from Wall Street and then still go and find ways to get stuff done for the American people. The Clintons are fighters and policy thinkers–they look for ways to deliver real change in people’s lives. They don’t just cave on everything and go with the wind/path of least resistance the way Obama does. It’s why Wall Street didn’t trust Hillary and backed Obama after already throwing their money at Hillary.

I think what you’re seeing here is a bunch of people that have lived through Nixon/Carter/Reagan/Bush 1/Clinton/Bush 2/Obama and can point to the President’s time in which they had it good.

To see Clinton unwind some of the Reagan excesses was such a joy. To see Obama continue and go further on all the Dubya excesses goes beyond disappointing. Plus, two years after Clinton inherited a recession, things were not only better, they were hugely better.

With me it’s not that I remember when I had it good. It’s that I really think my disappointment with Clinton was from the left, informed by my principal source of information, KPFK.
I wasn’t the first young lefty within range of that signal to be a bit misguided by ideological purity.

But, hey, I was in my twenties and idealistic and really believed we’d get a peace dividend and single payer healthcare now that we would be starting nuclear wars with MX missiles, and let gays serve in the military openly, etc.

When none of that happened and he went all weasely on foreign policy (continuing brutal sanctions against Iraqis and not doing a thing about Rwanda or the former Yugoslavia), well, I just had a different experience of Clinton.

For me the lesson has been no candidate will hold to their campaign promises (or campaign hints) unless forced to do so.

There is really an upsurge of stupid lately. Mid-terms? You people can look NAFTA up on Wikipedia and actually see it was a G.H.W. Bush bill that Clinton did not stop but did add safeguards to protect American workers, you might also want to look at the vote totals in the House and Senate.
//snark alert//
NAFTA was so horrible that is was the first overturned bill after republicans won control of the house and senate.
Trivia question : How many Free Trade Agreements did Bush sign?

Answer: 16 which includes 3 pending but signed by Bush.
Most of which left out the protections to American workers.

I think there are two categories of the pile-on-ers:
There are those who need to express some CDS everytime they point out an Obama flaw simply because they’re defending their own lack of judgement.

And then there are those that do this professionally. I think the 70-some-odd paid bloggers of the campaign are still employed and I think their employer has a real serious thing against the Clintons.

Maybe it goes back to the 60s. Rich kids were dressing like poor kids for peace love and understanding when they really just didn’t want to work for their dads or go to war; they wanted to get laid. Then there’s Bill who was not a rich kid, just one smart fox, who didn’t want to go to war, was already getting laid, but DID want to work for their dads.

I’m really thinking it’s a class thing. Bill was not the first black president–he was the first uppity president.

On balance, Obama’s presence in the race is a good thing. Whether or not he wins the nomination, he and John Edwards between them appear to have a shot at destroying or seriously damaging the death grip that the Democratic Leadership Council and their fellow travelers have had on the Democratic party for two decades. That wouldn’t have been possible without him, and it could have a lot of implications for Congress and the sort of House and Senate candidates Congressional Democrats choose to support and finance in the future.

Ooooh, de ebil DLC must be defeeted! Forget about competence, experience and all them other things.

They have a serious obsession about the DLC. It’s pathological and completely disproportionate to the actual effect that the DLC has on anything. What are we to make of this? It’s an Emannuel Goldstein thing ot like the evangelicals rabid fear of the Trilateral Commission.
There’s got to be a cult studies word for that.

FYI: Dana Milbank’s book is called, ‘Tears Of A Clown’ and it’s about Glenn Beck’s rants. Dana Milbank is a poor interviewer and today on RS/CNN he couldn’t remember or blanked out as to why he thought it was important to write about Mr. Beck’s Hate Rants. Daffy Duck did a better job!
Me thinks😉

I didn’t name the book Dan Milbank did! You know the guy that did the Hillary Beer skit and found himself without anymore skits to do.
I guess he and his side kick thought misogyny was going to be funny NOT!

That doesn’t even make any sense. The tears of a clown are when no one’s around. I’m pretty sure Milbank means Beck cries when EVERYONE Is around.

Ah, remember when Rush Limbaugh was Public Enemy #1. The Obots can pick targets all day and a new one will replace him. But all the targets have to do is go after the president and he’ll have to resign to make it stop.

I definitely called that one wrong with respect to Obama, but defending the DLC is just plain weird: people seem fond of describing the Clintons as FDR-style Democrats, and DLC policies are anything but. The organization was designed to move the party rightward, and it has succeeded admirably. Evan Bayh, Harold Ford, Joe Lieberman and so on. And who can forget Hillary touting John McCain’s experience as qualifying him to be president? But hey, whatever. I’m out of time.

Um, we believe that Hillary had a better handle on what needed to be done on the mortgage crisis. She proposed an FDR like HOLC solution.
Yes, she did say McCain’s experience made him more qualified. She was right. There’s more to politics than which party you belong to.
As for Lieberman, he was Obama’s mentor in the senate. And if the DLC was meant to move the party rightward, then you have to wonder why they thought that was necessary. Do you mean, more towards the center? More friendly to entrepreneurs? More flexible and less dogmatic? Who would argue those are bad things? And let us at least admit that what might have started out as well intentioned morphing into something else in the last 17 years. What has that got to do with the Clintons? AFAIK, Bill Clinton is not the grand poobah of the DLC. he doesn’t appear to be a involved in the DLC at all at the present time. He’s got a lot of other stuff on his plate. I certainly haven’t heard him adopt the pro corporation/pro banker line lately. Have you?

Hoooo, I just noticed the use of the term ” fellow travelers”. Now they’re not only right wing corporatists, they’re *commies*! How very McCarthy. “are you now or have you ever been a member of the DLC?”.
For Obama, that would be a definite yes.
So, there ya’ go. Obama was no more pure than Hillary. Now what is your excuse for rejecting the best candidate we had in 2008 at a time when the cow try was facing the worst crisis since the great depression for a newbie who was no better and certainly a lot worse based on his unethical and pathetic campaign where he lost every major state except Illinois?

Ooo, that’s a good one. Are you saying that the smarter you are, the more you are able to discern differences between people who claim to espouse the same things? That’s probably true. But how does it explain how so many lawyers got Obama so wrong?

Look back at this little thread from Talkleft. I was reading it today after looking for the video of Donna Brazille explaining the new, improved Democratic Party. Maybe that is the answer to your question. Its a new party! One I am not a part of. Anyway, this has alot of old stuff but some was new to me. I did not know that Donna was responsible for the original decision to deny our votes here in Florida. I remember the RBC meeting of 5/31 of course but had no idea that she played the role of doubling the penalty in the first place. Read the comments and relive the horror. The chickens are indeed coming home to roost…..http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/4/3/122945/9100

I see the era of the Clinton presidency as the last time America felt happy-go-lucky.

In thinking back (as in years) to the mid 70’s and that first formation of thought towards picking a political party given the era of tumult during Nixon and Vietnam? The Obots didn’t live that era, maybe. The Clintons were a Democratic ideal — to those of us who decided to become Democrats.

I just found this video — it explains what Dems were doing in that era when my gen were just little kids starting to form political opinions.. Have a laugh, this morning. Obots? Learn history. Your Obama was presented like Kennedy.

The Clintons? They were the real Dems who lived in the era you are seeing in this video. Really.

As a Democrat, I never doubted that the Clintons were Democrats.

Ever.

I have never felt Obama was a Democrat. For one thing? He wasn’t even here when most of this stuff was happening. Seriously.
A California Democrat knows…

Besides, Obama has said many times he loved Reagan.

Well, maybe at the rate things have gone, Obama is driving me over to Romney assuming he doesn’t choose Palin as a running mate. After what happened in 2008? After all the years I was a good little Democrat who gave to things like the United Way and tried to help the poor? Michelle Obama hurt my feelings when she said she had never felt proud of this country.

Oh well. I suppose adults see things differently, once they have grown up. I could care less about being a Democrat. The Democratic Party has done that to me. I so believed in them once upon a time. The Clintons and Jerry Brown are the last of an era.
Maybe Romney is my Reagan?

Whoo-hoo! Less than 100,000 hits before we reach 10,000,000. We should get ther by mid-October by my estimation. Maybe we can do a 50/50. You pitch some money into am pot and make a prediction on what day and hour we get there. We split the proceeds with the winner.

This still is read all around the world. Here is to your next 100,000.

And the next million, RD.

I do miss those old Rico posts. They were great.

ps: I watched the next video in that three part series and Newark was mentioned as he unfolds a newspaper. As I reflect back on this era we all lived, damn. At least in those days Americans had jobs, and newspapers. Hillary Clinton was the election of my lifetime. She was. I cried casting that vote in the primary, and I cried over many pieces I read here. The minute you started to write, RD, I knew you were a Democrat like me. A real one. Same historical era. But you went all the way to Denver with those orange T shirts.
Hard to forget that, or that you did that. It was brave and political and really fabulous.

McDonald’s Threatens to Cut Health Care Plans (Ha, the big insurance is 14.00 a week ($56.00) a mo., and it only covers $2,000. ‘mini med plan’ that wouldn’t even cover a broken ankle or a visit with X-rays…how they call that insurance is beyond me. WHERE IS THE PUBLIC OPTION! That min med plan isn’t insurance, they are just taxing their employees more and not providing insurance. So, much for ‘Health Care Reform’.

They have to bring out Bill Clinton for the mid-term elections. The Obamacrats actually hate their continued dependence on Bill Clinton. The only way to deflect their dependency is to start trashing Clinton all over again in the liberal blogosphere.

Bill Clinton is going out to California to help out Mr. Critical Brown (who is in a dead tie) and Gavin Newsom (who is lagging in the polls) for a whole month. Big Dawg is a hardworker…after the Monica snark by Brown, he has got a more forgiving soul than most people.

BTW, you don’t have to come here. If you choose to bestow your insights on another blog, we will understand. The internet is a large place. Surely, SURELY, there’s an asteroid somewhere else where you can shout into the wilderness.

You guys on this blog seem to indulge in a continuos orgy of anger. The primaries ended over 2 years ago . Ur candidate was beaten . Get over it. The sense of entitlement is just shocking and the nagging wife attitude is absolutely infuriating . Competitions are not won by the best neither are they won by the smartest or the fittest. They are won by the most prepared and Hillary was not the most prepared. She lost . So stop moaning. ………how do u know she would have been any different . She is still part of the establishment . One who has suddenly become very rich at that. Speaking engagement my butt. It is all a payback . Remember glass steagal. I hope u guys open ur eyes and stop following personalities. . The country is on a slow march down

Let’s see. We have unabashed triumphalism, bullying, sexist stereotypes, denial and stupidity. The commenter is definitely uninformed but typical of the dense Obot and new coalition Democrat. His party is going to have its clock cleaned in November and the only thing standing between a loss and a catastrophic loss appears to be the guy he can’t stand and that guy’s overqualified wife. But instead of making nice, he pulls out the stupid.
Maybe the Democrats deserve to fail.

I’m so glad Asshero posted because I wanted to raise this point. ObamaNation always falls back on the “Hillary lost, our guy won” shouting point. It’s positively pathological. Like some sick, schoolyard bully tic. Where does such a point belong in any reasonable debate? I guess every time a Republican wins an election, conservatives are the automatic debate winners. They are right on everything and there’s really no point arguing with them, cuz, hey, they won and your guy lost. Really? Really???? This is like 3rd grade debate tactics.

So without further ado, these are my answers to the question: Why does ObamaNation hate the Clintons so damn much?

1. They know that even if you believe, as I do, that Hillary won the primary, there is absolutely no question that at the very least she came in a razor close second.

2. The Clintons have Obama by the short hairs. ObamaNation loves loves loves to point out that “Obama is Hillary’s boss,” but the truth is that Obama had to give Hillary SoS (it wasn’t really his call) and she is showing the nation that it lost the leader we desperately needed but didn’t elect. And, to make matters worse, he needs Hillary and Bill to campaign for him. He is dependent on them, not the other way around.

3. ObamaNation is populated by idiots with the mentality of third graders. They don’t like adults. They much prefer the cool sixth grader who promises to hang out with them after school in exchange for their lunch money, but who never makes good on his promise.

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